


Morse Code

by swanqueenfic13



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 13:59:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5969634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swanqueenfic13/pseuds/swanqueenfic13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I use morse code to talk to my friend during class but it turns out you know morse code too and now you know that i think you have a cute butt” AU with beca and stacie talking about aubrey and chloe as if aubreys dad never taught aubrey morse code resulting in her teaching chloe!!!! ~~Prompt from anon on tumblr</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morse Code

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, my lovelies! So, I have another account on here as swanqueenfic13 but I am no longer solely swan queen trash. So, to reflect my equal-opportunity fic writing, I made a new profile on here. I'm going to finish out all of my ongoing multi-chapter fics on swanqueenfic13 and slowly transition over here. So... you can find me on either, but if you send me a prompt for anything new, it's going to be posted here!

Mrs. Skinner is like a legend.

She’s been walking the halls of Barden High, teaching her freshman English class for as long as anyone can remember. She’s a squat woman, not much to look at with hair the color of steel that hangs to her shoulders, and brown eyes that seemed to be stuck in a narrowed glare. She always wore floor length skirts and a sweater, and her white orthopedic shoes. Her voice, (the result of her pack-a-day habit of nearly fifty years, she warns), sounded like she was gargling marbles, and when she coughed, students worried she would die right there. Sometimes, if you were unlucky enough to sit in the first row, she’d spit when she talked. When a student in the front row was absent, she’s perch herself on their desk as she lectured, the stench of her cigarettes assaulting the nostrils of the poor person in the second row.

Mrs. Skinner was the best, and worst teacher anyone could ever ask for. She was a gifted educator. She knew her topic, knew how to reach every student. No one could deny that she was a nice woman who got personally vested in each and every student who passed through her doors, whether it was for a class, for a club, or just hanging around with a friend who was one of her students. 

The only flaw people found with her was her love of the rules. Mrs. Skinner lived and breathed by the student handbook, and enforced every rule. She once gave a freshman detention for being late, since he walked in as the bell was ringing (“a student is considered tardy if they are not in their seat when the bell rings, Adam,” she’d quoted from the handbook when he protested). If you dared to eat or drink anything other than water in her class, she’d throw it out. Students who walked the halls with coffee found their forbidden drinks snatched from their hands, watching helplessly as Mrs. Skinner poured the drink out her window. But her favorite rule to enforce was the no-technology policy.

Everyone knew about The Box. It was simple, handcrafted by the mysterious, never-before-seen Mr. Skinner. No bigger than two feet by two feet, it was just a square of wood mounted to her wall, just next to the door. The Box was then further divided into 30 different square cubby holes. At the start of every class, students were to leave their phones, iPods, and any other small devices in The Box. Mrs. Skinner watched to make sure everyone put theirs inside. All laptops were to be left in backpacks. No, in Mrs. Skinner’s class, everyone trusted good old-fashioned pens and paper for note-taking.

But what really struck people about Mrs. Skinner was not her smoker’s voice, or her impeccable hair, her love of rules, or The Box. No, what really struck people about her was her ability to know, and see everything. Since students couldn’t text each other in class, they would try to communicate through the use of handwritten notes. But, whether Mrs. Skinner’s back was turned at the time or not, she would see. And she would descend on the note-passers, snatch the note with her perfectly manicured nails, and proceed to read it out loud.

It became a game. Every year, students would try to figure out how to communicate in Mrs. Skinner’s class without getting caught. Every year, students would find sneaky ways of smuggling notes; some would cough to cover up the exchange, some would hide them in a tissue, some would even stick them under the table on a piece of gum. Nothing could get past Mrs. Skinner. One year, dedicated students with far too much time on their hands learned sign language, and communicated across the classroom. Until they found out that Mrs. Skinner’s sister was deaf. So she knew sign language, and inserted herself in their conversation mid-lecture. Students sought answers from upperclassmen, the internet, God, anything. There didn’t seem to be a way to beat her.

Until the year Beca Mitchell and Stacie Conrad came along.

 

“Morse code, Becs,” Stacie had whispered excitedly. Beca rolled her eyes. It was the afternoon of the first day of school, and they were sitting on Stacie’s bed, debriefing on the day.

“When will we have time to learn Morse code?” Beca replies dryly.

“I already know it. It’s easy, Becs,” Stacie snorts.

“You’re such a nerd, of course you know,” Beca rolls her eyes.

“Whatever, at least our best friends are in that class, too,” Stacie grins wolfishly. Beca blushes furiously.

“Shut up, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she grumbles. But Stacie knew that her vertically challenged friend knew exactly to whom she was referring. Chloe Beale, and Aubrey Posen, Beca and Stacie’s respective crushes. Beca had basically been in love with the bubbly, redhead Chloe Beale since she moved here in sixth grade. Aubrey and Stacie had had this weird love-hate thing since kindergarten. Where Stacie was carefree and naturally smart, Aubrey was uptight and worked hard to be the best. Both girls were fiercely competitive, and it was clear that part of the attraction was the competition, at least it was for Stacie.

“A whole class period where you can ogle her,” Stacie teases.

“I don’t  _ ogle _ ,” Beca shrieks.

“Got you to admit you like her,” Stacie sings.

“I hate you,” Beca growls.

“Whore.”

“Bitch.”

“Loser.”

“Nerd.” Beca wrinkles her nose at her best friend. “Fine, teach me Morse code.”

 

After a week, Beca was starting to get the hang of it, and carefully tapped out a message to Stacie in class, since her best friend was two rows over. Stacie didn’t break a sweat, taking notes, not even looking over at Beca. But, she replied to Beca’s test message immediately, managing to look absentminded while intensely tapping. Beca grinned when Mrs. Skinner didn’t even seem to notice. They had done it. They had bested the mighty Skinner.

 

_ “OMG,” _ Stacie tapped one day. It was late December, and the girls had gotten quite good at communicating in class when they needed to. “ _ Look at them. Those outfits!” _ Beca blushed. Today was the day that the school’s performing arts department would put on their holiday concert for the student body. As such, all of the groups came into school in their performance uniforms. Including the student a cappella groups. The ones that Aubrey and Chloe are in. The ones where they wear flight attendant outfits, all tight skirts and tighter blouses, and sexy, form fitting blazers adorned with matching scarves.

“ _ Really makes Chloe’s ass look good,” _ Beca replies.

_ “And Posen’s boobs. Not that they don’t always look good _ .” Stacie’s grinning now. And, unbeknownst to Beca and Stacie, so is Aubrey.

_ “Glad to know you like what you see, Conrad,” _ Aubrey taps back. Stacie stills in her seat, her pencil clattering to the desk. Everyone knows that Aubrey is the only person in this entire school who calls Stacie by her last name. “ _ Yep, Posen here.” _

“ _ And Beale. And trust me, Beca, those tank tops you wear? Gift from God,” _ Chloe taps out, turning to wink at Beca when she squeaks.

“Everything alright back there, Miss Mitchell?” Mrs. Skinner croaks, concern in her voice. Beca groans, holding her stomach.

“I don’t feel so good,” she moans, her face flushed, her stomach knotted with guilt, anxiety, and fear. With an approving wave from Mrs. Skinner, Beca runs out to the bathroom, her hands balled into fists. She stays there for ten minutes, trying to control her breathing and her raging nerves. By the time she crawls back to class, red faced, but mostly calm, class was ending. Beca and Stacie gather their things nervously, glancing at each other.

Chloe and Aubrey corner them in the hall as soon as they leave.

“So, you know Morse code?” Stacie asks weakly. The normally forward girl, never one to be shy when flirting, was now sweating, her knees shaking.

“My dad taught me when I was, like, five. I knew Morse code before I knew cursive,” Aubrey smirks triumphantly.

“So you’ve been…”

“Listening to your conversations? Yep. Pretty hard not to when you guys are always tapping away,” she snorts. Beca just digs her toe into the floor, too embarrassed to even look up.

“And I got curious, so I made her teach me,” Chloe chirps, nudging Beca. “So, you like my ass, huh?” she teases.

“I didn’t mean to objectify you,” Beca says hurriedly. Chloe throws her head back, laughing.

“It’s okay,” she finally says. “I’m pretty confident about all of this,” she adds, with a little shimmy.

“You should be,” Beca finally says, remembering how to form words. And with that, Chloe just smiles and grabs Beca’s hand, interlacing their fingers.

“Let’s go, shortstack. We’ve got some discussing to do about you, me, my ass, and your beautiful boobs,” she says, pulling Beca down the hall. 

“When did  _ you _ learn Morse code?” Aubrey asks, narrowing her eyes at Stacie. Stacie feels the challenge, and has to resist the urge to puff out her already prominent chest.

“Fifth grade,” she replies, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“Taught yourself?” Stacie nods. “impressive. Took me forever to learn, and that was with my dad teaching me.”

“Whoa, Posen, you complimenting me? Someone write this one down for the history books,” Stacie jokes.

“Aubrey,” she corrects. “If you’re going to stare at my chest, and kiss me the way you told Beca you wanted to, you should call me by my first name.”

“Aubrey,” Stacie grins, testing out the new (okay, so it was only new to her) name. “So, you remember that?” The kiss both girls were referring to was one Stacie had described, naming it a Gatsby kiss. They had been discussing Gatsby at the time, and watched a clip from the film (the Leonardo DiCaprio version, only because it was the only version the school’s library had- Mrs. Skinner had already proclaimed her preference for the 1974 version but the librarian was a DiCaprio fan). She had talked about kissing Aubrey like that, slow, and passionate, and heated, and intense, a thousand things at once.

“Of course I do,” Aubrey says softly. The halls are empty now, and both girls are likely to get detention if they don’t get to that assembly soon. Neither moves, except when Aubrey steps closer to Stacie, backing her against the lockers. Stacie’s breath hitches. “I can’t  _ stop _ remembering it. Thinking about it.” Her breath tickles Stacie’s face as she speaks, leaning closer. Stacie’s gaze drops to Aubrey’s lips for an impossibly long moment before she licks her lips, looking up to find Aubrey’s eyes locked on hers, smirk firmly in place. 

Stacie closes the distance, a soft pressure on Aubrey’s lips for just a moment.

“You girls are late!” Mrs. Skinner booms, startling the girls as they jump apart, faces red, breathing heavy though the kiss lasted barely three seconds. “Detention! One hour, with me! Let’s get to that assembly. Aren’t you singing, Aubrey?” she barks. Aubrey nods.

“Please don’t tell my father about the detention,” Aubrey whimpers as they walk with Mrs. Skinner to the auditorium.

“Nah, he doesn’t need to know,” she says, and Aubrey breathes a sigh of relief. “But I am glad you girls sorted everything at. So tell me Stacie, is that what you and Ms. Mitchell refer to as a ‘Gatsby kiss’?” she asks. Stacie’s jaw drops.

“ _ You _ know Morse code, too?” she asks incredulously.

“I do now. Gotta give you girls credit, I’ve never seen that one. Had to learn it just to keep tabs on you,” she chuckles. Stacie just shoves her hands in her pockets, mortified that it seemed like half the class had been listening in on her supposedly-private conversations with Beca. As they enter the auditorium, Aubrey plants a quick kiss on Stacie’s cheek, leaning in to whisper to her.

“I’ll see you after?” she whispers.

“Go on and show off that beautiful body, Posen. Oh, and your voice,” she snickers. Aubrey rolls her eyes, but goes to join Chloe and the rest of her group backstage. After a quick text to Beca, she finds her friend in the last row of the auditorium.

“We’re totally joining a cappella next year,” Stacie murmurs as the group takes the stage. “I would  _ rock _ that outfit.” Beca just rolls her eyes.


End file.
